


Dread Pirate Roberts

by biichan



Series: Last of the Time Ladies [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-14
Updated: 2008-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:39:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biichan/pseuds/biichan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you fall in love with someone pretending to be someone else, are you in love with them or the person they're pretending to be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dread Pirate Roberts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [st_aurafina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/gifts).



> Thanks to ionlylurkhere for being the best beta-reader in the world.

The name on her medical chart was Leila Smith and she had two hearts. It wasn't her real name. The name she told Martha to call her wasn't her real name either, but Martha wouldn't find _that_ out for quite some time yet.

"Call me the Doctor," she said as they ran down the corridor together and shortly thereafter she kissed Martha, turning Martha's world even more upside-down than the hospital on the moon and the space rhinos had.

So it wasn't altogether surprising that when she offered Martha a trip in her time machine later that night, Martha said yes.

* * *

"Your time machine's made of wood," Martha observed. It wasn't exactly large either. Though the idea of spending a lot of time in close quarters with the Doctor wasn't exactly unappealing (and Martha was swiftly beginning to wonder if she'd seriously underestimated her Kinsey Score.)

"Only on the outside," said the woman who was calling herself the Doctor.

"We aren't going to go capturing historical figures for your end of term report, are we?" Martha asked, frowning slightly.

"Hardly," said the Doctor with a sniff. She pushed the door open. "And yes, the inner dimensions are fairly bigger than the outer."

"You're not kidding," Martha said under her breath as she stepped into the stark white room. She glanced at the platform in the center. "Is this the control room?"

"Something like that, yes," said the Doctor. She hung her trench coat and fedora on the coat rack by the door, pausing a moment to stroke the terribly long scarf that was tangled in its branches. "The wardrobe room is over there, the food machines over there, and there should be a few rooms for sleeping down that corridor. Pick whichever you like. Unless you've evolved past that, I suppose, but that's not typical for a human from your time."

Martha was only half-listening."This is amazing," she said under her breath, pressing her hand to one of the roundels on the wall.

"It's woefully out of date, I'm afraid," the Doctor said. "Really, she ought to have been decommissioned centuries ago, though she's held up much better than I ever expected."

"You've had it—her—for a long time, then?"

"She was a friend's before she was mine," the Doctor said airily. "Now, do you have a preference as to where we go to first, or shall I just set it to random?"

"Random's fine," Martha said, turning back to face the Doctor. She blinked. "You've got a robot under your control panel... pillar... thing."

The Doctor chuckled. It was a nice sound. "That's my dog, K9. I'm afraid he won't be much company until he finishes recharging. Do you play chess?"

"Sometimes," Martha said. Then she grinned. "I taught myself to play tri-dimensional chess when I was fourteen."

"You'll have to teach K9, then." The Doctor began to fiddle with the controls. "Now, do you need anything from home?"

"Some books," said Martha awkwardly. "And a couple of changes of clothes. Shall I meet you back here in an hour?"

The Doctor threw a lever and there was a sound like the universe was being sucked through a vacuum cleaner hose. "No need," she said, with a toss of her curly hair. "I'll give you a lift myself."

* * *

"I have to ask," said Martha, "but do you ever get to visit anywhere without being captured?"

The Doctor pursed her lips. "Occasionally."

Martha sighed. "I thought so." It could be worse, she told herself. At least the prison cells in space were relatively warm and dry compared to those in medieval Russia. And K9 had been able to tag along for once, which was a good thing as his nose-laser had been quite useful at chasing away their Angvian prison guards.

"Don't pout," said the Doctor. "Look, once we're back in the TARDIS, I'll take you for dinner at Delmonico's. You like New York."

Martha blinked. Was she being asked out on a date? "Actually," Martha found herself saying, "we probably want to skip nineteenth-century America. Trust me on this." I'm an idiot, she thought to herself.

"Mmmm. Well, I'll have us out in just a minute and then we can discuss alternate plans. Sorry, the lock's a bit tricky."

"It's all right," Martha said. She frowned. "Why haven't we gone to your planet yet, Doctor?"

The Doctor froze. "My planet?"

"You _are_ an alien, aren't you?" Martha bit her lip. "Unless you're going to tell me that humans will genetically engineer themselves to have two hearts in the future and go around calling themselves the lords of time, which I suppose _could_ happen, but you being an alien seems much _simpler_ and, well, Occam's razor and all that."

"It's gone," the Doctor said softly.

Martha blinked. "Gone?"

The Doctor nodded. "Destroyed. There was a war—well, it doesn't matter now. As far as I know, I'm the last of us." She looked so, well, _vulnerable_. Martha wasn't used to seeing the Doctor vulnerable—she was an oasis of arch-eyebrow calm. It made her want to do... something. She wasn't sure what. Kiss her tears away, except the Doctor wasn't crying. (Martha wasn't sure if the Doctor _could_ cry. It might not be something people from her planet did. Had done.)

"I'm sorry," Martha whispered.

The Doctor reached over and squeezed her hand. "Don't be," she said. "It's not your fault."

* * *

"I ought to have known," Martha said. She and the Doctor were sharing a bedroll for the night. It was entirely innocent, unfortunately—the tent they were borrowing only _had_ the one bedroll.

"Mmm?"

"That Krishna was an alien. People always said that he was painted blue in art as a symbolic thing. But it's not symbolic, it's because he actually _is_ blue. I can't believe I never thought about that. It seems so obvious now." Although Arjuna, at least, was human, if highly modified by advanced alien biotechnology. It was his tent—and vacated bedroll—that they were sharing.

"Hindsight is like that."

"Mmm. I suppose it is." The Doctor closed her eyes, but Martha didn't think she was actually sleeping. Martha suspected that the Doctor didn't actually need to sleep, at least not regularly.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she asked suddenly.

The Doctor opened her eyes. "Wouldn't it be a rupee?"

"You know what I mean."

"Mrs Moore would have loved this."

Martha blinked. "Mrs Moore?" The name sounded familiar somehow, like someone Martha might have read about once.

"A friend. More than a friend, really. I traveled with her for a while before you. She was very clever."

"Oh," said Martha. She bit her lip. "Have you traveled with many people?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Enough. Rose, Mickey, Jack, Jackie, Lynda, Mrs Moore, Ida, Donna, Penelope, Penny..." She sighed. "I'm the Doctor. Having human—well, humanoid—companions traveling around with me is part of what I _do_, like saving the universe and bringing down governments and wearing the same thing every day."

"Oh," said Martha. "I see." It was rather silly, she thought, to think she was anything special, just because of a kiss that hadn't even been a kiss, really. Not in a way that meant anything.

The Doctor was looking at her oddly. "Something's wrong."

"I'm all right," said Martha automatically, though she wasn't, not really.

The Doctor rolled her eyes. "I'm not your mother. You don't have to lie."

Martha looked away, willing her voice not to tremble as she replied. Somehow it didn't. "You could just said you were lonely and needed someone to tell you how brilliant you were, instead..."

She could _feel_ the Doctor staring at her. "Instead?"

Martha swallowed hard. "Well," she whispered. "I thought you saw me. That you really saw me, not just as someone who did what you needed me to do, but as _me_. As Martha."

The Doctor didn't say anything for what seemed like forever. Martha shut her eyes, tight, and tried to ignore the wetness on her cheek. She wasn't crying over this. She wouldn't let herself.

And then, suddenly, there was the soft, cool touch of lips against her own.

"For such a clever human," the Doctor murmured, "you really can be remarkably stupid sometimes."

By the end of the night Martha was quite sure the Doctor knew every inch of her.

* * *

Afterwards they lay in the dark together in companionable silence, hand-in-hand.

"What happened to her?" Martha asked finally.

"Mmm?"

"Your friend. Mrs Moore."

"She died."

"Oh."

"People I love always die. Sooner rather than later."

The worst part of it, Martha thought, was how calm the Doctor sounded. If there was self-pity in her voice, Martha couldn't hear it. Just quiet resignation.

Martha wanted to tell her that _she_ wouldn't die, not her, but she knew that would be a lie and she knew the Doctor knew too. She was human. She'd die or she'd leave and even if she didn't leave, she'd still die someday.

Instead she squeezed the Doctor's hand. "I'm not dead yet."

* * *

The Doctor's voice was low and her breath tickled Martha's ear: "What do you think of the Ice Caverns of Shabadabadon?"

Martha hugged herself tighter. "Bit chilly. They're pretty, though." She'd found a hooded fur-lined jacket in the TARDIS wardrobe: it helped somewhat, though not quite enough. The Doctor herself wore a white fur wrap and that ridiculously long scarf that was always hanging by the TARDIS doors.

The Doctor eyed her thoughtfully. Then, nodding to herself, she started looping her scarf around Martha's neck. "I've got another in the TARDIS," she murmured, squeezing Martha's gloved hand. "I think you need this more than me."

"Thanks," Martha said softly.

The Doctor chuckled. "The white one goes better with the rest of my outfit anyhow." She finished draping the scarf over Martha's arms. "There," she said. "If you need to run, just throw it over your shoulder so you won't trip."

Martha raised her eyebrow. "And what makes you think I'll need to run?"

"Don't we always?" the Doctor said innocently.

Martha snorted. "Get your scarf. I'll wait for you here."

* * *

"Of the dozens of interconnected caves that make up the famous Ice Caverns of Shabadabadon," the voice behind Martha said, "the three innermost chambers—the Waterfall Room, the Cathedral, and the Sacred Heart were said to be the most beautiful, though the collapse of the Waterfall Chamber would cut off access to the other two." It was a pleasant voice, a bit Scottish sounding in an alien way, and very much not the Doctor's.

Martha turned around. Standing behind her was a tiny man in a truly obnoxious furry coat, which looked strangely familiar for some reason. So did the little man's panama hat and the red-handled umbrella which he was leaning on.

"Don't tell me," she said. "You're a tour guide from the future."

The little man smiled at her. "A tourist, rather, among other things. I was headed for the Gogglebox, but I seemed to have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque." His accent made the word sound exotic and alien; it took a moment for Martha to realize he wasn't talking about a far-off alien planet but a city in New Mexico.

Martha laughed in spite of herself. "I suppose I'm a tourist too. I was going to be a doctor, but I haven't finished my internship yet." She frowned, suddenly—it was if it hadn't quite sunk in completely before that if she wanted to finish her internship, she'd _have_ to leave the Doctor. At least for a little while.

"Ah," said the little man. He was looking at her thoughtfully, almost sizing her up. His expression was unreadable. He reminded her of the Doctor, somehow—the look of furious concentration she got sometimes.

"You know," said the little man after a long moment, "I used to have a scarf like that once." He rolled the R-sound gleefully: _scarrrrrf_.

"Really?" Martha said curiously. She was going to ask who actually knitted the ridiculous things when she heard a cracking noise

Oh, that was _not_ a good sign. She grabbed the little man's hand. "When I say run," she said under her breath, "we run. RUN."

* * *

They didn't stop running until they reached the TARDIS. Martha didn't need to fish her key out to open the door: it was already open, with the Doctor standing in the doorway.

The Doctor was staring at her. Martha took a deep breath. "It's all right," she said, hurriedly. "Really, it is. I mean, there was a cave-in, but..." She trailed off. The Doctor wasn't staring at _her_, Martha realized—she was staring at the tiny man standing behind her.

The Doctor was shaking. Visibly...shaking.

The little man blinked. "Romana?"

"_Doctor._" And with that single, whispered word, the woman Martha had known for so long as the Doctor began to weep.

* * *

"I suppose I'm dead," said the little man. The Real Doctor, as Martha was coming to think of him. He didn't seem all that upset.

"I'm sorry," Martha whispered. The Doctor—Romana—whoever she was—was at the TARDIS console. Martha supposed she was setting the co-ordinates for wherever the Real Doctor had his version of the TARDIS.

The Real Doctor shook his head. "I'm not." He leaned on his umbrella. "Everything ends, Martha," he said softly. "Everything has its time and everything ends."

There was a loud grinding noise, which was over almost as soon as it had started. Martha knew without even looking at the viewscreen that they were clear of the caves.

The Real Doctor tipped his hat to her. "Take care of Romana for me."

Martha gave a jerky little nod. "I will."

She didn't watch him leave. She saw him walk up to the Doc— to Romana and then she turned her head, feeling like she was eavesdropping. Whatever they said to each other was too quiet for Martha to make out. She was grateful.

_People I love always die. Sooner rather than later._

Martha's chest hurt and not just from all the running.

* * *

After he left, the silence seemed to stretch on for hours, though Martha knew that if she'd counted seconds, it would have been no more than a minute, maybe three.

"So now you know," Romana said finally, sounding more tired than Martha had ever heard her before. "I'm not the Doctor. I could never be him, no matter how many worlds I save, no matter how many dictatorships I bring down, no matter how many days I wear the same bloody outfit in a row. I might as well fix the Chameleon Circuit. I'm nothing but an assistant that's given herself airs."

"Don't," said Martha. She swallowed, hard. "Don't say that. Maybe you're not the real Doctor, but you're _my_ Doctor—"

"I'm a fraud," said Romana.

"You're my Doctor," Martha said firmly. "You're my Doctor and I love you. So there."

Romana laughed. It sounded like a sob. "You wouldn't if you knew."

"So _tell_ me," said Martha. There was a wooden chair near the coat rack. Martha turned it around to face Romana. "Tell me," she said, "because I'm not going anywhere."

So Romana told her.

* * *

_The Daleks had taken Gallifrey._

_Someone had betrayed us—had let them through the Time Barrier. We'd been subverted from within. I wish it could have surprised me, but I knew what kind of betrayal my people were capable of._

_The things I was capable of._

_I wasn't a very good president._

_Madam President Romanadvoratrelundar. Does that surprise you, Martha? It's not a title I like to claim anymore._

_I wasn't a very good president, not during wartime, though I might have been better if there'd been peace. But I'd faced Daleks before and that counted for something during our long cold war with Skaro. Not many of us had all those centuries ago. _

_It was a lifetime ago. Two lifetimes._

_There was an assassination attempt. Poison. In the madness of regeneration I did some very foolish things and when I came to my senses it was only to find that our fragile, uneasy peace had been shattered beyond all mending. And that I had done it._

_There was a war that raged across the fabric of time, unnoticed by the lesser species. A terrible war and one that we ultimately lost._

_But we would give the Daleks a pyrrhic victory._

* * *

"I was supposed to be the one to die," Romana whispered. "Not the Doctor. We'd come up with the plan together. I was to use the Sash and the Key to gain access to the Eye of Harmony and wake it, so that the Daleks would burn and we would burn with them. The Doctor was to stay aboard the TARDIS and try to confine what damage he could, so that the entire galaxy didn't burn as well."

"He stole them from you," Martha said softly. "The sash and the key." She'd have done the same if she were the Doctor.

Romana nodded miserably. "I set the TARDIS co-ordinates for your bedroom, the morning after we met. Do you want me to wait until you've had time to pack?"

Martha shook her head.

Romana swallowed, hard. "I see," she said.

"Tish wants me to go to this thing for her job," said Martha quietly. "I told you how she does PR, right? One of the things she does is organize fancy parties so that the right people can meet each other. I'm allowed to bring a guest. I usually don't. You can call yourself the Doctor or Leila Smith or Romana Dvoratrelundar or anything you want... just come with me. And we'll figure out the rest afterward. All right?"

"All right," Romana whispered and she didn't quite smile, but it was near enough to one that Martha thought that they really would be all right after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the DW Femmeslash ficathon for st_aurafina, who asked for (among other things) Old Who characters meeting New Who characters, eminent historical figures, other planets, drama on spaceships, and most of all characters who aren't the Doctor being smart and competent.


End file.
